Launching Your Own Personal Training Business

Give your entrepreneurial spirit a workout of it's own

By Daniel Kidd

To launch your own personal training business you will need to make sure you can deliver a quality service yourself, unless you’re planning to hire staff right from the start. Normally, personal trainers are already experienced fitness instructors, and they will generally have a recognised national diploma in health and fitness. It will be difficult to win new customers if you can’t prove your expertise.

You should carry out market research, identify the demand for personal training in your area, develop a business plan and find suitable premises. Unless you’re financing the business yourself, you will also need to take your business plan to a bank or investor to obtain start-up capital. It might be a good idea to find another personal trainer who’d like to go into partnership with you. This person will inevitably have a specific skill set that compliments yours well. One question that is common in these situations, though, is how to pay them?

If you’ve contracted someone to provide a specific service to your business, the question of whether their payment should be recorded against expenses or cost of sales depends on what kind of service they provided.

Cost of sales (also known as cost of goods sold) should only include expenditure that’s specifically tied to a particular product. So if the contractor manufactured, assembled or modified some items for you, for example, they should be paid from your cost of sales. However, if they provided financial advice, administrative assistance or designed an advertising campaign, their services would qualify as ordinary business expenses.